


Babble

by RadioWaves



Category: Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood
Genre: AU in which Crake calls Jimmy at 3am with lit questions, Does anyone still actually read Oryx and Crake fanfiction? Hello if you're reading this, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Introspection, Jimmy's very lonely and sad basically, Swearing, Unhealthy Mindset, also not TECHNICALLY Crake/Jimmy but if you squint..., can you spot all two very obvious literary allusions if you do you win a prize
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:00:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29683635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RadioWaves/pseuds/RadioWaves
Summary: BABBLE:-Talk or speech that has no meaning.-(Of a stream) To make a low, continuous noise of water flowing over stones.OR“Did you ever hear the story of the Tower of Babel?” A familiar voice asks.
Kudos: 3





	Babble

It’s three in the morning when he hears the phone ringing. Three twenty-four, if he’s being precise, but he never really cared to be. That was Crake’s job.

His head’s fuzzy from the booze, his body feels gross from the sex, and he’s in that state of too-sensitive-too-numb-spiralling-out-of-control that can only come from an evening’s worth of bad decisions rapidly catching him when he’s exposed by the dark. Weakness enshrouds him. It’s a typical Tuesday night for him, and he feels the weight of his decisions as if they’re sitting on his chest, stacking into a crushing pile.

…maybe he’s still high. He always gets a little maudlin towards the end of a high.

He rakes a hand through his hair, as if he’s trying to scratch the vulnerability right out of his skull.

“Yeah?”

He tries to exude a sort of breezy aura in case it’s one of his many late-night fucks hitting him up for a tryst. He tries to come up with a neat rejection, but the words aren’t coming to him tonight, and isn’t that rich? What use is it being a sell-out if you can’t even use your jargon to wriggle out of something like this?

There’s something there about his tongue being a dead fish. On the phone- phone line, his dead fish’s tongue caught on the line, isn’t that funny?

_Is it? Isn’t it?_

Fuck, his head’s swimming.

_That’s irony, Jimmy. Dead fish tongue, swimming head; aren’t you an artistic mess of a man?_

“Did you ever hear the story of the Tower of Babel?” A familiar voice asks, and it’s like cold water seeping into him through the thick fog he’s in.

“…Crake? What the fuck man- I… How many years—”

There’s a sigh in response, indulgent.

“Once upon a time there was a group of people who all spoke the same language. They wanted to build a tower to Heaven in order to surpass God and live without him. Because of that, he split everyone up into speaking different languages, so he could punish them and they couldn’t communicate well enough to build the tower. Does that sound familiar to you?”

He is either too drunk or not drunk enough for this. Trust Crake to pick the worst time to call and read him a bedtime story. Trust Crake to reappear from his golden throne when he’s hit rock bottom.

“Uh… no. I- what are you—”

“What do you think it means, Jimmy?”

It sounds like Crake’s smiling, which is an alarming notion and how the fuck can he even KNOW him well enough still after all this time to pick that out? All at once he feels a wave of fear sinking into him, soaking his bones, electrifying his heartbeat in a way he hasn’t felt in years.

The story terrifies him, he realises shakily. He’s still too gripped by the fog to understand why, but his body’s already skipped ahead of his brain, primal instincts blaring out an internal alarm. His accelerated heartbeat tastes red and blue, like siren lights. _Danger! Danger! Danger!_ It screams _. It’s coming, it’s coming!_

_It’s already here._

He chokes through it.

“Are you HIGH? Do you know what fucking time it is?”

He doesn’t miss a beat. “Are you?”

He muffles a groan into his palm.

“Fuckin’ WAS.” Or maybe still is, he doesn’t know, can’t tell. “What’s this about?”

“I want to know what you think it was about, Jimmy.”

He isn’t sure that he’s breathing. He must be, if he can hear the sirens, still feel the warning signs melting through him sizzling him up neon cold-hot inside, but god it’s a close thing. He’s not sure that he’s a person, really, anymore. He’s half in the fog, half in the phone line, waiting for Crake to cut him loose, waiting for the static to buzz through him sharp enough to cut the tethers keeping him here.

“I don’t know! Jesus Crake, I’m- I guess…” It’s tragic that he attempts to think, really. That he wants to impress him, somehow, even at his worst. _Just wind him up and watch him go, give him the scraps of validation his mother never gave him, make him beg for it, it’ll never fill the hole, he isn’t real, he’s fog, he’s off his face, he’s a dead fish caught on a line_ —

“Fuck. About how God’s a dick, maybe? It’s- about how people can’t get cocky and try to overcome their nature, I guess.” He thinks he can feel his hand scratching at his arm, can feel his nails hooking in, trying to peel out the answers from beneath his skin. Fishing. He’s fishing for answers he doesn’t fucking have. He breathes- in some distant part of himself, he’s still scared. His nails hook into his skin and his mind hooks on the story and his ears hook on Crake’s breathing. “We’re all fucked up. People wanna make great things, wanna make ourselves feel strong and big and fucking- powerful or whatever, but you hit a block, hit something bigger and better than yourselves and you fucking lose it. Revert backwards ‘cause you’re always a bad fucking day away from being an animal again.”

It feels like the words are bleeding out of him and he’s helpless to stop them. He can’t stop his mind creating pictures, creating links- _there’s Jimmy with his useless fucking degree, there’s Jimmy tearing it apart with his teeth and hands and he can’t understand the words on the paper anymore, there’s Jimmy fucking like a beast to get rid of the weakness inside of him, there’s Jimmy curled up and drunk on more than just the booze, stomach and throat exposed, there’s him snarling backed into a corner, scared scared scared it’s fight or flight, a hand reaching out at him and claws are flicking in and out of the image_ —

Crake hums mildly, and it chainsaws through the slideshow.

“Is that right? I thought maybe you’d say it shows how important communication is between people. How important our Words are. That was your degree, right?”

He tries to cast his mind back to his degree _. Problematics_. He can’t even remember what he did, can’t remember doing the work for a degree at all, just the weight of the piece of paper he got after he wandered around that building for enough time, the printed title in neat block letters that felt branded into him: **PROBLEMATICS**. That’s what he was, right? A problem. _Your son’s becoming a problem at school, your mother had problems, family problems, fix this problem for us, “what’s your fucking problem, Jimmy?_ ” He didn’t have a degree he had a diagnosis for being an issue, pain in the ass, a fucking loser who groped for words like a prostitute in the pleeblands groped for handfuls of lazily-flung coins off of a filthy floor while men jeered. What had he even traded those words in for? A dead-tongue, unable to move, unable to speak, can’t think of the right things to say, can’t connect, only hindering _what IS my problem what ISN’T my problem_ _what am I doing right? What do I say tell me I’m good please I’ll give you so many useless fucking words if you stay the night_ \-- 

He tries to think about building a tower to God, but God’s wearing Crake’s face and it’s made up of so many words he doesn’t understand so he starts chipping away at it while faceless bodies shriek at him in anger, a roar he doesn’t understand and it scares him so much he can’t help but try to break it faster, God becoming a blur as chunks of language reign down on him, crushing his bones into little useless pieces but still he can’t stop, he’s angry he’s scared _it’s too high it’s pointless are those people?_ _How can they be when I don’t understand them_ —

He breathes in, out, like he’s been gargling shards of words.

“No,” he says hoarsely, swallowing the nightmares down. “I don’t think that’s it.”

The answering hum from the phone seems to accept this.

“Alright Jimmy. Thanks.”

He can feel Crake moving to hang up on him, and he panics. He can’t find anything to hold onto in the dark of his room, can’t feel his body laid out like a corpse on the bed, his mind’s wriggling and slithering away from him without Crake hooking him on and he’s not sure that he’s real. _He’s a person, he’s a fish, he certainly drinks like one, that’s a joke it’s funny is it, is it, is it real? Ask the Scientist he’ll know._

“Wait! Fuck, Crake—” He tries to relax his throat, let the words come through instead of jamming inside of him, crushing his windpipe. It’s the fear, the lingering fear causing this mind to scream at him while his body moves without him. He feels so alone suddenly, in a way he hasn’t felt since he was a kid. “Crake… this was real, right?” He pleads. “You’re real?”

All at once, the darkness is dragging at him again, the fog he’s trapped in making him uneasy, making clarity impossible. It’s so dark he could be asleep, if not for the voice. Is Crake real? Of course he’s real, the boy from _HealthWyzer_ , so smart that Jimmy’s useless brain could never have dreamed him up. But here and now, is that real?

_Am I?_

_Once upon a time there was a man who dreamed he was a fish, a fish diving and swimming about, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Jimmy. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakeably Jimmy. But he didn’t know if he was Jimmy, who had dreamt he was a fish, or a fish dreaming he was Jimmy_ \--

“Go to sleep, Jimmy” The voice on the phone says gently, and it sounds female in some of the vowels, sounds like his dead mother, sounds like Crake in the consonants, sounds familiar and it’s messing with his head, he can’t understand, maybe the tower’s already been broken and he’s stuck on the wrong side.

“Crake?” he tries, desperately.

“Goodnight.”

The phone line goes dead.

Something within himself does too, though the silence cuts at him so sharply he can’t tell what it is. He tries to wave a hand in front of his face, but it’s so dark he can’t see if he has fingers or scales, can’t see which side of the dream he’s in. Can’t hear anything aside from a dull roar- maybe it’s in his head, maybe it’s the ocean, maybe it’s the tower builders baying for his blood.

The roaring builds up and up, pressing into his skull, crushing whatever body he’s in, and he curls up thinking this is it, this is how he dies, he’s gone he’s dead…

…until he realises it’s the phone ringing.

He snatches it up hungrily, eager for distraction.

“Crake?”

The voice on the other end gives a distinctly feminine huff.

“Who’s Crake, Jimmy? You got another girl keeping you company?” It’s the voice from one of the woman he’s fucking, a name he isn’t sure he could remember even if he hadn’t just talked his way into a panic attack with a voice from his past. He can’t remember how he’s supposed to handle this. “Anyway- what’re you doing right now? You busy?”

“I’m- I was asleep, I think.” He says hoarsely. His conversation feels like a distant memory, despite him being sure it only happened a few moments ago. The woman doesn’t seem put off by his inability to speak- maybe she’s used to it, maybe he’s never been able to communicate with her, with anyone.

“Sleeping, huh? Want some company in that big bed of yours?” She purrs, and it’s not subtle, it’s like a sledgehammer to a wall, but it still takes him a moment to understand the meaning. He feels wrong-footed, like his strings have been cut. He gets the alarming feeling that he won’t be able to see anyone but Crake for the rest of the night, and that should make him angry because he’s missing out on a chance to bonk someone’s brains out from the comfort of his own home because of a stupid story from a childhood friend, but instead he just feels tired.

“Yeah… can’t, sorry. Can’t get it up tonight.”

She just huffs again.

“Really? Well that’s disappointing. My husband’s working late tonight. Would have been a nice way to spend the evening.” She sighs. “Well… maybe next time, then. See you.”

He murmurs a lacklustre goodbye, curling up as the line goes dead again. It doesn’t matter- she wouldn’t have really understood what he was saying anyway.

Before he falls unconscious he can feel the two conversations circling in his head, merging and blurring in disturbing ways until all he can hear is Crake’s voice asking _Want some company, Jimmy_?

“Yeah” he says quietly, before finally passing out.

_I do_.

**Author's Note:**

> No beta, we write rambling, unhealthy mindets in a huge unedited paragraphs like MEN.


End file.
